


so long as it is wild

by skeilig



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Getting Together, Hiking, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:48:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27013042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeilig/pseuds/skeilig
Summary: “Doing okay?” Bev asks him. “How was your drive?”“Fun, actually. We stopped at a fruit stand. Want some fucking…” Richie slings his backpack over his arm to dig into the pouch. “Apricots?”“Is this…” Bev starts and stops. “Have you seen Eddie at all since…?”“No.” Richie shakes his head. “No, there was one time I was in New York in, um, in March, but I didn’t… I felt bad about it but…” Richie forces his mouth into a steady smile. “It’s better when it’s all of us. This’ll be fine, don’t worry. Just one-on-one is a little weird for me still.”Or, the Losers go to Yosemite and that’s as good a place as any to sort out your shit.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 45
Kudos: 322





	so long as it is wild

**Author's Note:**

> Self care is writing the Losers taking the exact same vacation you did two years ago. Most of the details are from memory so if I got something wrong, no I didn’t.

It’s roughly a four and a half hour drive from Los Angeles to Yosemite National Park, and Richie thinks it’s short enough that he probably won’t have to take a turn driving. Besides, Bill seems happy enough behind the wheel of his Range Rover, fiddling with the radio and with the A/C. It’s kind of a weird journey, too, through California's sweltering, arid central valley. It’s going to get much cooler once they’re up in the mountains, but for now it’s nearly a hundred degrees. They stop at a gas station and Richie buys a popsicle that has chili powder in it. It’s pretty good. 

Richie hasn’t seen Bill in two months—he’s been in Toronto, and Richie’s been traveling a lot, too—and he hasn’t seen the others in longer than that. But it’s now been a little more than a year since they met again in Derry, and Ben and Bev have appointed themselves chairs of the reunion committee. They’re on a mission to make sure the remaining members of the Losers’ Club get together at least once a year. 

The occasion is the final leg of Mike’s cross-country RV tour. That’s what he chose to do with his freedom after his friends bankrolled his early retirement, and now he’s made it to California. There were times over the past year when Richie wished he could switch places with Mike, that he were the one traveling aimlessly. Granted he doesn’t really like camping or being alone or making his own decisions or not having enough to do. But there was still something that sounded appealing about it, especially as Richie was negotiating the next stage of his career. 

Richie’s enjoying his time with Bill so far. Bill’s a funny guy to observe, kind of like Richie’s dad in that way. He doesn’t seem cripplingly self-aware like Richie is, and he does funny things, such as trying to guess what’s growing in the fields they pass. 

“What d’you think that is, Rich? Those trees? Almonds maybe?”

Richie glances out the window at the field of short shrubby trees, forming neat rows that morph into mesmerizing diagonals as they fly past. He has no idea what kind of trees those are, nor does he care, but it’s endearing that Bill wants to know. 

“Yeah, I think almonds,” Richie says. 

They arrive in Fresno in the late afternoon and park at the airport. 

Richie checks his phone and reports back: “Bev says they’re at a Starbucks inside. We can wait there until Eddie gets in.” 

Beverly wears sunglasses and a tracksuit in a near parody of a public figure dressing down for the airplane. Ben’s not dressed as discreetly, but he also hasn’t been in the news as much over the past year. They stand up from the table for four they’ve claimed and greet Richie and Bill with hugs. 

Richie gets himself a latte and goes on a stroll with Bev, leaving Ben and Bill to chat and watch their bags. 

“This is gonna be great,” Bev says sincerely, shooting Richie a smile. “I’ve never been, but Ben was showing me pictures from one of his trips. He says this time of year is perfect because it’s not as hot or crowded. I mean, it’ll still be pretty crowded but not as bad.”

Richie nods absently, sipping his drink. “Yeah, it’ll be fun.” He checks the time on his phone again. Still an hour before Eddie’s flight from New York is supposed to land. 

“Doing okay?” Bev asks him. “How was your drive?” 

“Fun, actually. We stopped at a fruit stand. Want some fucking…” Richie slings his backpack over his arm to dig into the pouch. “Apricots?” 

Bev turns him down but Richie pops one into his mouth.

“Is this…” Bev starts and stops. “Have you seen Eddie at all since…?”

“No.” Richie shakes his head. “No, there was one time I was in New York in, um, in March, but I didn’t… I felt bad about it but…” Richie forces his mouth into a steady smile. “It’s better when it’s all of us. This’ll be fine, don’t worry. Just one-on-one is a little weird for me still.” 

“Okay, well.” Bev gives him a sad half-smile and pats his arm. “Bill’s a good buffer.”

Richie barks a laugh. “Yeah, that’s for sure. Love that guy.” 

By the time Eddie finds his way to them from baggage claim, Richie feels jittery but at least he can blame it on the grande latte he just sucked down. 

Eddie drags a rolling suitcase behind him, wears a clunky pair of hiking boots and khakis, and carries a huge hiking backpack on his shoulder. He seems more prepared to backpack through the mountains for a month than to stay in a well-furnished lodge for five days. 

“Eds,” Bev greets him, pulling him in for a hug that he somewhat reluctantly accepts, shifting the backpack on his shoulder so he can return it one-armed. “How was the flight?” 

He rolls his eyes a little. “It was– not good but we don’t have to…” 

Eddie waves his hand as Bev says, indulgently, “Oh no!” 

“We don’t have to get into it,” Eddie says and then turns to hug Ben and Bill. When he turns his attention to Richie, he falters for a moment, smile slipping as his eyes lock on Richie’s. 

“Hey, man,” Richie says with a little wave. 

“Hey,” Eddie says and steps in to negotiate an awkward hug, each of them turning their faces decidedly away. 

“Well, we should hit the road,” Bill says then, because he is a good buffer. Bless his heart. “It’ll be dark by the time we get to the park.” 

According to google maps, it’s only another hour from Fresno to Yosemite, but it turns out to be quite a bit longer than that. It’s slow going because the roads are narrow and winding as they climb into the mountains, and it’s getting darker by the minute. Along the drive, Richie alternates between twisting around in his seat so he can talk to his friends in the back and facing forward so he can help Bill navigate. 

Eddie reveals at some point that he’s been _training_. 

“Wait, wait,” Richie says, cutting him off with a raised hand. “Training? What the fuck do you mean? You train for vacation?”

“We’re going hiking, asshole,” Eddie says. 

“Yeah, but like _day hikes_. There’s gonna be teenagers wearing flip flops on the same trails as you with your hiking boots and– and– are you gonna use those pole things? Please say yes.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. He’s sitting in the crowded backseat, Bev in the middle and Ben on the other side. “Okay, when I said training– I meant, really, it was more of a motivation for me to work out again. I’ve been falling out of the habit. Plus I don’t want Ben and Mike to hand me my ass.”

“And me,” Bev says, elbowing him. 

“And Bev,” he adds. 

“Bev and I might hike Half Dome,” Ben says then. He always seems to have the same conversation as the other Losers in terms of topic but a very different one in terms of tone. 

From there, they switch gears to talking about Half Dome because Eddie has researched it and he thinks it looks like a great hike but Ben and Bev were planning to do it over two days and camp one night, which makes it seem like it’s not an open invitation to third-wheels. While Eddie starts to backpedal his way out of it, Richie turns to face forward again.

By the time they enter the park and start descending into the valley, it’s completely dark. Nothing outside the narrow scope of the headlights is visible, and Bill drives slowly, carefully maneuvering through the hairpin turns. There’s a point when they emerge from a tunnel—cut into the granite wall of the mountain—that Richie looks to his left and sees nothing but the black void of night, not even the shadows of trees that he can usually make out on either side of the road. He figures this has got to be quite the scenic viewpoint, but for now it’s nothing, just emptiness. 

They’ve rented two cabins. Mike greets them at the check-in building. He’s been here for a week already, and looks like he’s settling into it well enough. He wears a fleece pullover and well-worn hiking boots. 

Richie’s sharing a three-bed cabin with Bill and Eddie; after they drop off their bags, Mike’s going to take them to see his RV, parked at the nearby campground, but Eddie says, “Sorry, I’m exhausted, I’ll see it in the morning,” and climbs up to the loft where one of the beds is located. 

So Richie goes without him, trying not to think anything of it. Eddie had the time change from the east coast, is all. So did Ben and Bev, but Eddie goes to sleep earlier anyway. 

Mike’s RV is not much larger than a van and full of laundry hung up to dry. Only Bev can stand up straight inside of it, everyone else has to hunch over. Mike opens the bathroom, which is a hilariously tiny closet with the shower head directly above the half-size toilet. 

“How are you supposed to shower in here?” Richie demands, cackling at the mental image of Mike—a big guy—squatting over the toilet naked. 

Mike, laughing, shoos Richie out of the way and says, “Watch this.” He slides out the walls, doubling the size of the bathroom, then raises his eyebrows, looking self-satisfied. “Eh? Pretty cool, huh?” 

“I honestly can’t believe you live like this,” Richie says. “You can use our bathroom while we’re here, okay?” 

Mike shoves the walls back in, collapsing the bathroom back to its travel size. “Thanks. I’ve been using the campground showers, actually, but I’ll take you up on that.” 

The five of them sit around in the RV for a while, catching up and laughing and drinking a couple room-temperature beers because Mike’s fridge is the size of a toaster and has more important things to keep cool. 

When there’s a lull in the conversation, Richie considers telling the rest of his friends what happened between him and Eddie. It’s unlikely that he’s going to get another opportunity like this, all of them together in-person sans Eddie, late enough that it feels not quite real and easy to be honest. 

But he doesn’t. 

After about an hour, Bill, Richie, Ben and Bev trek back through the campground until they find their cabins. Inside, Richie strips off his coat and jeans, brushes his teeth, and falls into one of the main floor beds. Eddie must be asleep already in the loft above them; he doesn’t make a sound.

* * *

It was in December, the tail end of 2016, that Richie realized that he and Eddie were more or less having an emotional affair.

Eddie was still married—hadn’t done much more than cautiously float the idea of leaving his wife—but he and Richie were in near-constant communication, and had been for the past three months since they left Derry. They texted every day and spoke on the phone nearly as frequently, and Eddie complained about Myra at length. Every fight they had recounted to Richie in detail, their texts screenshot and sent to him. And Richie, of course, would back up Eddie at every turn, reassure him that he was in the right, that Myra was acting crazy or unfair or what have you. 

Richie never said anything that wasn’t true. He could see objectively that the relationship was very bad and that it should end. 

But less objectively, Richie was in love with Eddie and if Eddie was going to leave his wife, he had some specific hopes for what would happen next. The more Eddie complained, the more emboldened Richie became in outright telling him that he needed to end things. Eddie would sigh, a puff of air through the phone speaker, and say, “I know… I know.” 

All of this could have been written off as nothing more than an intense friendship until Richie came out—to Eddie and to the rest of their friends, not publicly quite yet—in mid November. The next time they spoke on the phone, Eddie told Richie in a rush of words that he always thought he was attracted to men, too, and that he and Myra hadn’t had sex in over a year at that point. 

Things between them escalated from there. 

Richie’s always been bad at picking up signals. He needs things to be unambiguous before he’ll let himself believe that someone could be interested in him. Even so, he began to suspect Eddie was flirting with him. It was the tone of his voice as much as anything he said, the soft laughter and teasing as well as the emotional moments, when Eddie told him he didn’t know what he would do without Richie.

So on one late night phone call, when the intimacy of Eddie’s voice close in his ear became too much to bear, Richie said, with his hands shaking, “Look, this is just getting to be a lot for me to handle. The way we talk sometimes. Because I mean it, Eds, and I want you to mean it, too.” 

Then against all odds, Eddie told him that he felt the same way. He went into great detail, even, about the extent to which he felt the same way. Richie felt all at once exhilarated and nauseous and sort of disproportionately turned on, alone in his bed. The two of them started to make breathless plans for Eddie to go ahead with the divorce that he’d been stewing on for months, and to quit his job and move across the country to move in with Richie. 

“It’s not just now,” Richie told him, upping the stakes of his own confession now that Eddie had reciprocated. “I felt the same way when we were kids. It’s been my whole life, I just didn’t know it. God, I love you so much. I can’t wait to see you. I miss you like crazy.” 

Before they hung up that night, they went over their action plan one more time. Eddie would talk to Myra in the morning and start with the divorce. He would quit his job later that week. He would probably be able to move to LA by the end of the month. It was really happening. 

“Goodnight,” Richie told him, his heart aching. He was still shaking; he had been the entire time. 

“Goodnight, Richie,” Eddie said, his voice full of genuine affection. Richie could have cried. “We’ll talk tomorrow. Um. We’ll always be friends, right?” he said, vulnerable and soft. “No matter what happens? Richie, I _can’t_ lose you. Not again.” 

“We’ll always be friends,” Richie replied automatically. “No matter what.” 

The next day, Richie felt elated, like he should pinch himself to make sure it was real. He also felt sort of sick all day, but that was just nerves. His life was about to shift irrevocably. Eddie _felt the same way_. Impossible, but true. 

He told Bev, texting her after he woke up, but he told no one else. 

He ended up grateful that he kept it mostly to himself. 

Eddie asked to call Richie that afternoon. When they got on the phone, Eddie immediately began apologizing. Richie didn’t understand at first. 

“I talked to Myra,” Eddie said. “And, Rich, I’m so sorry, but… We’re going to try to work things out.”

Blood rushed through Richie’s ears while he heard Eddie try to explain, interspersed with apologies: _I don’t think I really feel that way about you… I’ve never been with a man before, you know… And we haven’t seen each other in a long time… I think she’s right, that I was just happy to have you back in my life and I got kind of confused about what my feelings are… I’m so, so sorry, Richie… I understand if you need space… Whatever you need. I’m so sorry._

Richie stood there in the middle of his large, empty kitchen, phone pressed to his ear, listening to Eddie’s tremulous voice. The last twenty-four hours had felt unreal and dreamy, but now reality came crashing back, like being drenched in ice cold water. 

Richie was angry and hurt—later, he did take Eddie up on his offer for space, texting him a slew of not-so-nice messages that started with, _So you just agree with the last person you spoke to?_ and ended with, _Yeah, I need to not talk to you for a while_ —but more than anything he was embarrassed. He shouldn’t have got his hopes up. He should’ve known better. 

The worst part was now Eddie knew everything that Richie felt for him, more than Richie initially intended to reveal. He was encouraged by Eddie’s apparent reciprocation, spilled his guts, and there was no putting that genie back in the bottle. 

He really should’ve known better.

* * *

In the morning, Richie wakes up to someone patting his shoulder and saying his name. It’s bright inside the cabin. It takes him a moment to remember where the fuck he is—not at home—and his eyes focus slowly on Eddie’s blurry face.

“Hey, you gotta come outside and see where we are,” Eddie says. He’s wearing a puffy vest over a black, long sleeve Underarmour shirt. It’s somehow both dorky and sexy. The sleeves cling to the curve of his biceps and he has his hands stuffed in his vest pockets. 

“Where are we?” Richie mumbles, still half-asleep. 

But he drags himself up, pulling on a sweatshirt so he can step outside of the cabin, still in his pajamas with socked feet. 

The rest of his friends are gathered on the porch outside, drinking coffee in paper cups. 

“Where’d you get the coffee?” Richie asks, making grabby hands. 

Bev doesn’t let him have a sip. “Look up,” she says, which is sort of ominous. 

Richie looks up. “Oh, shit,” he says, his eyes following the sheer cliff faces that rise around them in all directions. He definitely didn’t notice _that_ when they arrived last night, under the cover of darkness. “Fucking wild.” His neck starts to hurt from looking up, as he spins around in a circle. 

They have four full days here. On the first day, Mike directs them through a driving tour through the valley and up the way they came the previous night. Now, they stop at the mouth of the tunnel, where Richie had caught a glimpse of the void last night, and get out of the car. 

“Wow,” Bill breathes, voicing what they’re all thinking. 

They scramble across the road to stand with the rest of the tourists, staring out at the valley stretched before them. The pine trees are a carpet of green, flowing between the granite cliffs on either side. Mike begins pointing out landmarks: El Capitan, the tall sheer cliff face to one side, closest to them; Bridalveil Falls opposite, the shimmering water catching the sunlight; Half Dome in the distance, its severe face standing perpendicular to them. 

Ben gets roped into taking a photo for a young couple, but then they offer to return the favor. The Losers gather together in front of the low stone guardrail and turn their backs to the view, smiling at the camera. Richie edges in a bit closer to Eddie, nudging him so he’ll step in front of him. 

Over a quick lunch at the lodge’s cafeteria, they agree on their first hike of the trip. It’s a relatively short and very popular one, leading them past several waterfalls. Mike recommends it for beginners, which he says while giving Richie a pointed look. 

Richie hasn’t been hiking in over a decade and there are more stairs than he expected. While he’s trudging up the stone steps, occasionally glancing up to catch a sight of the first waterfall on the hit parade, Ben starts making small talk. 

“So how’s Caleb?” he asks. “What’s he up to this week?” 

Richie’s bringing up the back of the pack; he looks up and sees Eddie walking in front of him. It’s warmer this afternoon, and he’s in shorts now. His calves flex enticingly with each step. And he’s close enough that he can definitely hear Richie and Ben’s conversation. 

“He’s good,” Richie says. “He has work.” 

Caleb is Richie’s sort of boyfriend. Well, Richie’s probably the only person who injects the ‘sort of’ in there, and only in his own head. Caleb is an actor, a series regular on a show that Richie guest starred on earlier that year. They started seeing each other, and two months ago Richie went with him to a premier, and that was that. He was out and they were an item. Richie doesn’t think it’s that serious, but he’s also, historically, not a very good judge of the seriousness of relationships. He’s always either the one pushing too hard or the one dragging his feet. 

Richie knows that Eddie must know about this—Richie’s coming out via red carpet date made a medium-sized splash on the internet—but Eddie’s never addressed it. Regardless, Richie’s not above a bit of performative bragging. 

So, while he fights to keep his breath steady, still climbing the never-ending goddamn stairs, he tells Ben some unnecessary details about Caleb’s job and coworkers and upcoming career prospects. 

Eddie keeps hiking in front of them, never glancing back, but he definitely hears all of it.

* * *

It was only a couple days after Eddie’s rejection that Richie got back on the dating apps and hooked up with the first guy who messaged him. It was fine, no worse than usual, but he did have to confront the fact that for the past few months he had pinned all his hopes onto Eddie. Even before he confessed his feelings, or was consciously expecting anything to happen between them, Richie wasn’t putting himself out there or trying to meet people or even sleeping with other people. Somehow, pathetically, he got everything he needed from his long-distance, fuzzily platonic relationship with Eddie. But now he had been told, in no uncertain terms, that this relationship was never going to progress any further.

Realizing that he would have to actually _move on_ hurt worse than he expected. It may have been the worst part of the rejection, knowing that he had invested (wasted) a few months on this Eddie pipe dream, and having to sever those idle hopes at the root. 

If he’s being honest with himself, he still hasn’t moved on.

* * *

After the hike, they grab pizza and beers from the lodge. They sit outside on the deck and compare photos and try to decipher trail maps and make plans for tomorrow.

“Can we see those, uh… big ass trees?” Richie asks, before taking a sip of his beer. He could get used to hiking if it always ends like this. 

“Redwoods?” Mike supplies, quirking a brow. “Those are coastal. But there are sequoias here.” 

“Yes, _sequoias_ ,” Richie says emphatically, as if he didn’t know. 

“Actually, redwoods and sequoias are the same species,” Ben says. 

“ _No way_ ,” Richie exclaims, not because he’s particularly invested in the discussion but because he’s feeling a little punchy from the travel and the fresh air and the beers, and it’s fun to respond with enthusiasm to Ben’s never-ending trivia reel. 

This time it ends up encouraging Ben to fact-check it, so soon enough he’s reading from the Wikipedia page for _Sequoioideae_ and amends his previous statement to say, well, coastal redwoods and giant sequoias are different species in the same subfamily. 

“Oh, right,” Richie mutters, catching Bev’s eye, where she’s sitting next to Ben, and winking at her. She rolls her eyes fondly. “I knew that.”

“You were just calling them ‘big ass trees,’” Eddie points out. “You did not know that.” 

“I think ‘big ass trees’ is the genus,” Richie says sagely. “What’s the latin, Benjamin? Biggus… assus…”

The bit thankfully comes to an end when Mike says, “Oh, we can see the lodge where they filmed The Shining.” 

“What?” Richie turns to him, confused. “Like, the hotel? I thought that was in… fucking… Oregon.” 

“No, it’s not…” Bill sighs, seeming very put-upon that he has to explain this. “It wasn’t filmed here, but the set for the interior was based on the Ahwahnee Hotel.” 

“Oh, shit, yeah,” Richie says. “Let’s do that! Let’s go!” 

They end the night around a campfire, by Mike’s RV, joking about how easy it would be for bears to break in. (They had been warned, at length, by a park ranger about removing all traces of food from their car at night, and hadn’t stopped joking about it since. Even food-scented chapstick, she had said!) 

“Okay, but–” Mike says, laughing, while Richie and Ben pretend to claw through one of the windows. “I actually can’t keep food in there because the bears absolutely would be able to break in. Like, no problem. Have you seen what they can do to a car?” 

“I wanna see a bear,” Bill says, before standing up and walking off into the darkness as if he’s just going to stumble upon one. 

“Is someone gonna… go after him?” Mike asks. “No? Okay.” He gets up and half-jogs after Bill, still chuckling. Their voices are distant when they start calling back, after a minute, “Guys! We found a bear! Yeah, come out here! There’s a bear!”

No one reacts. 

Eddie scoffs. “Are they children? I’m going to stay by the fire where there’s beer.”

Richie and Ben stop trying to demonstrate the flimsiness of Mike’s RV—it’s self evident just by looking at it, anyway—and sit back down by the fire. “It’s so funny how you’re exactly like an old man, Eddie,” Richie says, and acts on some inane impulse to snatch his beer bottle and take a sip. Eddie makes a sour face. 

“But actually, you’ve always been like this. You guys remember when we were like, twelve, and he was like, ‘Richie, don’t drink that, you’ll get giardia!’” 

“No, that was today, Rich,” Ben says, smiling wryly. 

“You _have_ to taste the water!” Richie insists. “We’re in the mountains, this is the cleanest water we’re ever gonna get, it’s the water of gods, and I’m not passing that up.” 

“Animals still shit in it,” Eddie says. 

“Animals shit in all kinds of stuff,” Richie says, waving a hand dismissively. “It’s fine. I have guts of steel, it was delicious, no regrets.” 

“Well if you start puking in the middle of the night I’m not helping you,” Eddie says. “I’ll sleep right through it.”

“I’m surprised you’re even still awake,” Richie points out. “You usually conk out by 9:30.” 

Richie regrets saying that immediately because the reason why he knows the ins and outs of Eddie’s circadian rhythm so well is because they used to talk on the phone for hours every week, and his early bedtime made it difficult to schedule calls from opposite coasts. 

“It’s ten,” Ben says, checking his watch. Bless his oblivious heart. 

“Yeah, but the… time change,” Richie says quietly. 

Eddie doesn’t say anything, and then Bev inhales sharply and says, “How are you anyway, Eddie?” 

“I’m good,” Eddie says, but the thing is, he’s a terrible liar so it comes out all strained and high-pitched. Bev laughs and he says, “I guess that wasn’t very convincing.” 

“Not at all,” she says. 

That’s usually all the prompting Eddie needs to really spill his guts. 

For the next ten or fifteen minutes—Richie has no idea where the fuck Mike and Bill went, but hopefully bears are _not_ involved in their disappearance—Eddie talks about his still-fresh divorce. 

Richie’s heard things through the grapevine, and he’s seen conversations in their text group chat that he didn’t reply to, but it’s different listening to Eddie talk about it in person. On one hand, Richie is relieved that the relationship is finally over. He’s known for a long time that their marriage was a bad one, and if he played any small part in killing it, then he’ll sleep easy at night. Even if he had to throw himself on the tracks to get it to happen. It needed to end, and Richie’s mangled corpse is acceptable carnage. 

On the other hand… he’s fucking furious that Eddie is now regurgitating all the things that _Richie_ had said about Myra for months, and that Eddie won’t even glance in his direction as he says it. 

And Richie hates himself for feeling like this is about him at all. That’s probably the worst part; just how little any of this has to do with him. 

“I still remember,” Eddie is saying, “when I first told her that I wanted a divorce, she said, ‘Well, Eddie, I didn’t know you were so unhappy.’” 

Eddie does a little Voice when he says that—crisp enunciation, a little shake of his head to bring some physicality to the impression—and Richie has never actually heard Myra’s voice but he’d bet it’s dead on. 

“Bullshit,” Beverly grumbles. 

Eddie and Bev have been talking quite a bit over the past few months, and all in all, Richie’s glad they have each other, even if it drives him crazy that he’s no longer Eddie’s go-to for emotional support. But Richie has no one to blame for that but himself. 

“Right!” Eddie says. “She was like, ‘I didn’t know there were problems because you never _told_ me, Eddie!’” 

“Oh, fuck off,” Richie mutters, directing it at the absent Myra Kaspbrak. He stares into the fire, and the glow is hot on his face and on the denim folds around his knees. “She didn’t know there were problems because whenever you brought them up she made you feel like you were crazy for thinking there was anything wrong or like you were attacking her. So you were scared to bring up problems! That _is_ the problem, Myra!”

Richie sinks back into his chair a little. Eddie stares at him, his face hard to read, shadowed by the flickering fire. Richie looks back at the beer gripped in his hands, frowning. He should probably stop throwing in his two cents about Myra—he’s clearly the most biased person on earth to weigh in on the topic—but it makes him so righteously angry how she treated Eddie that he can’t help it. So what if he shows his hand? 

Mike and Bill stumble back into sight then, interrupting the awkward silence. 

“Hey, guys,” Bev greets them. “Thought the bears might’ve got you.” 

Soon after that, they’re back in their cabins and falling asleep. Richie lies flat on his back, mentally replaying the way that Eddie stared at him across the fire. It gets a little worse in his memory each time. Richie’s given him a long time and a lot of space, and apparently it didn’t make a difference. It’s always going to be too soon to hint at what happened between them; it’s always going to make Eddie pull back and get distant. 

And Richie’s not a total fucking idiot, he knows what that means. He was rejected once, he doesn’t need to hear it again. 

Bill snores, which is unsurprising but still really aggravating. Richie rolls over onto his side and tries to will himself to lose consciousness. 

The next day, after breakfast in the lodge, they pile into Bill’s car, having to first wrestle the third row of seats into upright position, and then argue about who’s small and agile enough to climb back there. It’s Bev, obviously, but Richie joins her in the back for the slow, meandering drive up and out of the valley. They stop at several scenic lookouts and for short hikes, at one point scrambling up onto a bare granite dome, affording them a nice view of the valley below. 

“This is basically like climbing Half Dome,” Richie says, using his elbows to nudge his way in between Ben and Bev, who will start that iconic hike tomorrow. “So we’re all getting the experience now.”

“Yeah, totally,” Bev says, shooting a smile at Ben as she loops her arm around Richie’s waist. “You’re not gonna miss out on _anything_.” 

“I could still crash your party,” Richie threatens. “Don’t tempt me.” 

There’s an outcropping of rocks that comes up to Richie’s chin, and Eddie, like a mountain goat, has scaled it. He’s standing on top of the jagged stone pillar, hands on his hips, looking out at the view. Eddie’s never been west of the continental divide, but he looks like he belongs out here. 

“You want me to take your picture?” Richie offers, holding up his phone. 

Eddie glances back at him. “Sure.” He turns around to face Richie, hands still on his hips and chest puffed out, and smiles. He always smiles for pictures with his mouth closed which is a shame because Richie thinks he has really nice teeth. 

“No, don’t look at me,” Richie says. “We’ll pretend it’s candid.” 

“Why?” Eddie asks skeptically. 

“I don’t know,” Richie says, still waving at him to coax him to turn back around. “Do you need a good Match dot com profile pic? Bumble? What the fuck do adults use?” 

“Are you not an adult, Richie?” Eddie questions, smiling again, with his teeth bared this time, as he turns back to face the view. 

Richie holds up his phone and moves a bit closer to frame the shot. “A candid picture… proves that someone cares enough about you to pay attention to you when you aren’t paying attention to them. Trust me, it’ll get you a ton of matches… buzz… swipes. Whatever.”

Eddie’s a little backlit, his face at a three-quarters view. He’s glowing, a combination of a slight end-of-summer tan—he definitely didn’t have that a year ago, in Derry—and the hazy high-altitude sunlight. Richie’s heart jumps into his throat. He takes a picture, then another one. 

“Okay,” Richie says, cupping his hand over his eyes to block the light while he checks the results. “It’s good. We got it.”

“Thanks,” Eddie says. “Send that to me.” 

They eat sandwiches out of the trunk of the car and keep driving up higher, winding through the hills. At one point, they turn a corner and end up in a section of burned forest. The ground on either side of the road is black with soot, the trees stripped bare but still standing. Bill pulls over and they step out for a moment, to look at the charred hillside. 

They end the day with dinner at the hotel restaurant, and hang around afterward exploring the grounds and the lobby and referencing The Shining and dicking around in the gift shop. Richie spots a National Parks monopoly board which he finds hilarious. He points it out to Mike who snorts and says, “Trump Administration Department of the Interior.” 

Bill ends up buying a bird watching book, determined to mark off the rest of the birds they see this week in some kind of tribute to the Loser no longer with them. 

“That’s nice, Bill,” Richie says, then holds up a book on foraging. “I’m gonna buy this and eat everything we see. I think Stan would’ve hated that.” 

“Those photos are in _black and white_ , dipshit,” Eddie says, reaching to snatch the paperback from his hands. “You’re gonna poison yourself.” 

After dinner, when it gets dark, Mike says he has a surprise for them. 

“I hope it’s bears,” Bill says, because this has apparently elevated to inside-joke status between them. 

It’s not bears. 

They park in the valley, where the road parts on either side of the Merced River, and by the light of their phones’ flashlight apps, they make their way into the meadow. It’s seriously dark out here, but the moon is almost full and noticeably casting light onto the valley. There are a few other campers lying out on spread blankets. 

“Great stars out here,” Ben says, stopping to crane his head to look up.

“Not just the stars,” Mike says. “Did you know that it takes most rock climbers three days to climb El Cap? So, they actually camp out on the cliff at night.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie says immediately. Richie cackles. 

“Seriously!” Mike insists, taking Eddie by the shoulders to spin him around so he’s facing the cliffside. “They sleep in sort of hammock-like tents on the cliff, and at night you can see…”

With perfect timing, there’s a flash of light from the dark cliffside far above them, a focused beam that turns to face out then reflects back against the cliff below. 

“You can see their headlamps!” Mike concludes, sounding extremely self-satisfied. 

“I hate that,” Eddie grumbles. 

“You hate the thought of sleeping thousands of feet off the ground?” Richie asks. “This is cool as hell, thanks for the insider tip, Mikey.” 

Bill spreads a blanket on the ground and they lay there for a while, on the valley floor, watching the headlamps of climbers flickering like stars against the dark granite. 

Back at the camp, the group splits, some heading straight to bed—including Eddie—but Bev and Richie stay up, sitting on the rocking chairs on the porch. When Ben turns in for the night, he gives Bev a kiss on the top of her head and says goodnight.

“Do you have to leave crazy early tomorrow?” Richie asks her once Ben’s inside. “You can leave me if you need to sleep, even though I will be very, very lonely.” 

“Not too early,” she says, but then pauses to yawn hugely. “We’re doing it in two days, so we don’t have to get a super early start.”

“That’s gonna be fun,” Richie says sincerely. “Take lots of pictures, be safe.” 

“Will do.”

“How’s paradise, anyway?” Richie asks. 

Bev looks up at him, a smile twitching on her face. “Oh yeah? Wanna hear about my perfect life so you can wallow in self pity?” 

Richie laughs. “Whoa, touchy.”

“Sorry,” she says, remorseless. She plants a hand on each armrest of her rocking chair to push herself up. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“It’s so dark,” Richie points out. “And the bears, Bev… The bears are gonna get us.”

“I can definitely outrun you,” Bev says, pulling on Richie’s arm. “Let’s go.” 

It is really dark, but there are a few ground lights along the path that leads from the camp to the lodge, so that’s where they go, shuffling along. Bev obviously just wanted a bit more privacy from prying ears inside the cabin, so now she opens up, speaking freely. Richie can’t even see her face, so it has the intimacy of a late-night phone call. 

"I know you’re joking when you say that,” Bev says, “but this year’s been really hard actually. He’s great but he has, like… unfathomably low self-esteem? You know, he’ll get down on himself and I’ll have to reassure him.” 

"That’s kinda cute,” Richie says. He can picture it, too, Ben with his big sad eyes and mopey mouth. 

“Yeah, at first, but…” Bev sighs. “I have my own shit, too, you know. I’m… Ugh.” She stops, and makes a short, frustrated noise. “Fuck it, okay, I’ll tell you. So I used to dissociate pretty much every time we had sex. And I’ve been working on it, trying to be more present, but that leads to me panicking most of the time. And now… We haven’t sex in, um… three months? And he definitely thinks it’s a problem with him so he won’t really bring it up, but it’s a problem with _me_ and I just…” She trails off. “I’m gonna fuck this up.” 

Richie stops and turns to face her. He still can’t make out any discernible features but he reaches out for the dark Bev-shaped shadow standing in front of him. His hand bumps into her chest. 

“You fully grabbed my boob, Rich,” she says flatly. 

“No I didn’t,” he says, laughing, moving his hands to rest on her shoulders instead. “Beverly. Bevvie. Darling. You’re not gonna fuck this up. He loves you to pieces. Have you… talked to him?” 

“Have I _talked_ to him!” she repeats indignantly. 

“That’s not really an answer,” Richie says. “I think you should say exactly what you told me right now.”

“He has advice now,” Bev mutters, and he can hear the wry smile in her voice. 

Richie flings an arm around her and starts directing them back to camp. He switches into his smooth radio voice to say, “Thanks for your call, Beverly, but I have to let you go now, we have another caller on the line. Hello? This is Dr. Tozier’s Troubled Lovers Hotline, what can I do for you today?” 

“Hi, Dr. Tozier,” Bev says in a sort of nervous, nasally voice. She’s not the best impressionist, but she gives it her all. “My n-name is B-Bill, a-and–”

Richie guffaws. “You’re _so_ mean!” 

“And my wife and I _aren’t_ getting divorced, allegedly, but I never talk about her, and none of my friends have met her even though it’s been a year, and I’m pretty sure we don’t even live together anymore, and I’m having an emotional affair with one of my childhood friends–”

Richie covers his mouth and nose to stifle his snorting laughter. “Beverly!” 

She shrugs, her narrow shoulders lifting under Richie’s arm. “Mike tells me stuff. I listen non-judgmentally.” 

“And then you repeat it, very judgmentally, to me.” 

“Mhmm.” 

In the morning, Richie, Eddie, Bill and Mike get coffee and breakfast from the lodge and hop onto one of the shuttle buses that runs loops through the valley. They’re going to see the big ass trees today. Richie is really excited. 

The Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias has recently been renovated and reopened to park visitors, only walking trails going through the forest now, where they used to let tourists drive their cars. The exhaust pollution, in addition to the fact that they literally carved tunnels through living trees big enough to drive cars through, proved pretty detrimental to the health of the forest. It’s one of those silly old-timey things, like putting actual cocaine in Coca-Cola, but the pictures are kind of charming to Richie. He would drive a car through a tree if no one told him it was a bad idea. He would also drink full-coke Coke, but who’s counting.

The bus drops them off at a visitor center and from there they set out on the boardwalk trail, through the forest. The air is cool and fresh, dappled sunlight reaching the ground, filtered by the canopy hundreds of feet above them. Eddie stops to read every informative plaque along the trail—he hums with nerdy interest at one about controlled burns—and Richie, at one point, ducks to pick up a pinecone from the ground. 

“Grow your own sequoia,” Richie says, pressing it into the palm of Eddie’s hand. “Souvenir.” 

“It’s so small,” Eddie says immediately, closing his fingers around it. It is smaller than most pinecones, considering it grows into the largest tree on earth. It’s round and smooth, the scales tightly packed, requiring fire to burst open. Eddie’s eyes are wide with wonder, rubbing his thumb over it. Then he shakes his head. “We can’t take this.”

“Why not? Just one.”

“Well, if everyone takes one,” Eddie says, gesturing around at the crowd of visitors. “Nope.” He tosses it off the fenced-in trail and it lands in a bed of dry pine needles. Eddie turns to keep walking.

They’ve fallen behind Mike and Bill by quite a ways at this point, the two of them visible ahead on the trail, checking out a felled and hollowed-out sequoia. They take turns posing with a foot up on the gnarled roots of the tree and taking each other’s picture. 

As Eddie and Richie keep meandering up the trail, Eddie clears his throat and says, “So, you and Bev are pretty close, now… it seems like. She said you’ve been talking a lot?” 

Richie feels an inexplicable rush of anger at that, his head going all staticky, skin hot. But maybe it’s not inexplicable; unless Richie’s senses are deceiving him, Eddie sounds kind of _jealous_. 

And how dare he? How dare he feel possessive of Richie, or like he’s not getting enough attention? After everything he put him through. Richie wanted to _be_ with him. He would have given Eddie everything. 

Richie lets the little bump of rage guide him, and he says, “Yeah, we were talking last night. She and Ben aren’t having sex, apparently, but at least she’s aware that that’s a problem.”

Eddie’s silent for a long beat—Richie’s ears are still rushing but he doesn’t look at him, keeping his eyes fixed on the trail ahead—before he says, “Oh, right, yeah. Would take a real idiot to stay in a sexless marriage for years.”

“Well, if you’re saying it,” Richie says with a surprised laugh. He feels mean, his jaw clenched, but it’s hard to take a step back and stop himself. “I mean, I’m not judging, but Eds. You really thought you were gonna work that out, huh?” He whistles low. 

“Yeah, sunk cost fallacy I guess," Eddie says dully. “It had been five years, what’s a few more? In the grand scheme of things…”

“Five years,” Richie repeats. “Shit. That is depressing to think about.”

“Imagine living through it,” Eddie mutters. 

“I literally can’t,” Richie says, laughing again. “No sex in a year? Please tell me you’ve gotten laid since the divorce.”

Richie wants to kill himself. What the fuck is he even saying? He’s trembling a little, all his words coming out loud and sharp-edged. He’s sweating underneath all his layers of sporty hiking clothes, polyester and fleece. 

Eddie’s quiet for a beat. “I have not,” he says finally, with a tight, icy-eyed smile that Richie catches in his periphery. “I’m not good at the rebound thing, I guess.”

That sends prickles shooting over every inch of Richie’s skin. He’s so angry that he’s a little light-headed and probably in danger of tripping, even though they’re walking on a fucking wheelchair-accessible boardwalk right now. Why the fuck are they hiking anyway? Who hikes? This is a terrible vacation. 

“Roasted,” Richie mutters, stupidly, just to say something. 

“Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it, Rich,” Eddie says.

After that, they stay focused on walking, weaving in between families and strollers and ducking around people taking photos, not speaking to each other until they catch up with Bill and Mike. 

* * *

It wasn’t long after Eddie’s rejection, only a couple weeks, that Richie found some excuse to mention a recent hookup in the group chat. It was pretty transparent—all he really wanted was for Eddie to know that he was fucking other people—but he complained about the guy leaving his coat behind.

Richie asked, _If he doesn’t ask for it back, am I required to contact him about it?_

It escalated a little from there, because Mike immediately asked whether it was a nice coat. Richie said it’s nice but it wouldn’t fit him, too small in the shoulders. Mike said, _Then give it back_. Richie thought that was pretty hilarious ( _Michael! Do you steal from one-night stands often? Collecting trophies?_ ). The back and forth kept going for a while, Richie taking the opportunity to slip in a few unnecessarily lurid details— _I made him come twice so maybe it was a tip for my amazing service_ —exhilarated and a bit nauseous at the opportunity to indirectly tell Eddie about his sex life. 

__Eddie was silent throughout the whole thing, but he texted Richie privately the next morning._ _

_Hey I’m sorry I just had to say that made me really uncomfortable last night and I’m not ready to talk like that with you yet._

__It was the first thing Richie saw when he woke up, that message, which had sat untouched on his phone for three hours already._ _

__He felt immediately icy-hot with shame because of course Eddie saw right through it, knew that Richie was trying to be a dick, trying to show off and prove he didn’t need Eddie or that he was moving on. Really can’t get more pathetic than that. Nothing says ‘I haven’t moved on yet’ quite like trying to make the other person jealous._ _

He rolled over and thought about how to reply. He kind of wanted to punch out from his chest and start a fight, say something like, _You’re the one who rejected me and you can’t handle hearing about me with other people?_

But of course he didn’t. All he said was, _Okay, I’m sorry._

Eddie replied after only a couple minutes, said, _It’s okay. Sorry._

____

* * *

The big ass trees are amazing, but Richie ruins it for himself by being a little bitch who can’t get over his best friend.

He should text Caleb back, speaking of rebounds. He has shit reception out here, but there’s Wifi in the lodge. At dinner, he’ll text him back, send him a couple photos. He needs to value the relationships he actually has instead of always striving for the next thing. 

When they leave the Mariposa Grove, they drive out following the Merced downstream, a part of the valley they haven’t explored much, occasionally stopping to climb down to the water. 

Richie scoops up a handful of cool water again and tastes it, just in an attempt to coax a reaction out of Eddie. It doesn’t work, and maybe Richie _is_ actually going to give himself giardia out of his desperation to get Eddie to look at him. Wouldn’t that be poetic. 

They make their way back at sunset, waving at the looming silhouette of Half Dome as they pass to say goodnight to Ben and Bev, somewhere up there, cozy together in their little tent. They eat a cafeteria dinner at the lodge, after which Mike and Bill elect to stay behind to drink and chat up some Dutch travelers they’ve somehow befriended in the past few minutes. Eddie announces that he’s going back to the cabin. Richie semi-reluctantly follows him, because he’d rather spend some awkward one-on-one time with Eddie than watch a soccer match with Mike and Bill’s new European pals. 

It’s dark now, mid-October, so the sunsets sneak up on you and then it gets dark all at once. Richie follows Eddie down the lighted path to their cabin.

Once they’re inside, Richie sits on his bed, plugging in his phone and trying to get his data to kick the fuck in, but it’s totally unresponsive. Eddie’s in the bathroom, and Richie hears him going through the motions of getting ready for bed, even though it’s not even 8pm. 

When Eddie emerges from the bathroom, dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt, he looks at Richie, warily edging his way around the bed. The cabin is small, a little on the cramped side of cozy. It appears Eddie is making his way toward the ladder that leads to his lofted bedroom, but he stops short, his hand resting on a rung. 

“Hey, Richie, I just–” he starts, shaking his head. “What you said earlier today– Look, you know better than anyone how I feel about Myra and how she treated me. What kind of reaction were you looking for? Do you want me to fucking apologize for having been married, or that it was hard for me to leave?” His voice gets a little unsteady with anger. “You’re always pushing me about this and I don’t know what you want from me. I’m sorry she treated me like shit and made me afraid to be on my own and made me doubt all my own thoughts and feelings, okay? Is that what you wanted me to say?”

There’s a beat of silence, Eddie still staring at him, one hand clenched over the rung of the ladder. 

“I’m sorry,” Richie says quietly. His cheeks are burning. He hates this so much, when he goes too far and his cover gets blown and he has nowhere to retreat. He feels like Eddie has cracked open his ribcage and is prodding at his exposed, beating heart. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. It was really a dick thing to say, to even bring that stuff up. I went too far. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Yeah, okay.” Eddie’s visibly shaking. He rakes his hands through his hair. “Fuck. It’s like– it was a _bad_ relationship, you know that, and I know you make jokes out of all your feelings but this isn’t yours, Richie. It’s not actually funny.”

“Okay, I know, I’m sorry,” Richie says desperately. He feels tears pricking at his own eyes now. “I’m really sorry. I’m, just, I’m an asshole, I don’t know–”

“No,” Eddie says firmly. “That’s not– You’re not an asshole. I know you’re not. So why did you say that?”

Richie feels hysterical. He rubs harshly at his eyes, under his glasses. “I just have some… hurt feelings and they kinda spilled over in a mean way and that’s shitty.”

He wants to promise it won’t happen again, but he stops short because he can’t guarantee that. It will almost definitely happen again, and that’s the ugly truth. 

“Richie,” Eddie says quietly. “We never really… talked.” 

“Yeah!” Richie agrees, his voice coming out loud and the tone all wrong. “We didn’t.”

Eddie steps away from the ladder, like he’s not just going to climb up and flee this situation. He leans against the wall opposite the foot of Richie’s bed and looks at him, lips pursed in a tired kind of sadness. “Do you want to talk about it now?”

Richie’s been daydreaming about _talking about it_ for months. Dreaming about all the ways he might epically rip Eddie a new one, or, more frequently, fantasizing about Eddie apologizing, saying he’s had time to think about it and adjust, and now he _does_ want to be with Richie. 

Even with all that time, Richie still feels unprepared and too fucking raw to talk about it. 

But he decides to anyway, gripping his hands together in his lap. “Eddie, I’m just… frustrated, I guess. Because the things you said, I don’t understand how those were lies. All I said was that I had feelings, and you came out of the gate with: ‘When I’m spending time with Myra, I wish it was you. I think about you when I touch myself. When I met you again in Derry it scared me because I forgot that it could feel good to know someone that well.’ Like, you were, what, just saying what you thought I wanted to hear? It was all pretty fucking specific. And I just… I’m still angry at you, and I don’t like feeling that way, but I don’t know how it’s possible that you… don’t understand yourself? Like to this extent. That you don’t even know what you want. At all. And more than that, I’m just really fucking humiliated and I feel like things would be better if I had never told you. I wish I never would’ve told you and that we could be normal.”

Richie takes a deep breath at the end of that. He’s staring at the foot of the bed, where his socked feet are curled, toes like talons into the mattress. His whole body is tense and he’s shaking despite how tightly he’s trying to hold himself together.

“They weren’t _lies_ ,” Eddie says quietly. He’s still standing at the foot of the bed, arms crossed. “I’m sorry. I know I fucked it up, I shouldn’t have… I wasn’t ready at the time, and I fucked it up. I wasn’t ready for a relationship.”

“Well, I am,” Richie says, sort of nonsensically and more emotional than he wanted. “I fucking am.”

“Okay.”

“It’s been long enough. I’m secure on my own, or whatever. I’m actually ready.”

“Okay,” Eddie says again, his voice quiet and tremulous. 

“And I really… want that. You know?” Richie sniffs harshly; he’s actually crying a little now. “I really want to be with someone. And I still… I still want it to be you. Fuck.”

He collapses a bit, bringing his knees up to his chest and hiding his face in them. His shoulders shake a few times, sobs that don’t quite manifest. 

“Richie,” Eddie says. Richie can see that he’s moved, can hear that he’s closer, can feel that the mattress shifts when he sits down on the end of the bed. Richie doesn’t look at him. “At the time, I thought that I would lose you if I said I didn’t feel the same way. You were the best friend I had and it was too painful to think we might not be friends. And– not consciously, you know? I wasn’t _lying_. But that’s where it came from. I was really desperate.”

“Oh thanks, that’s great to hear,” Richie mutters into the dark space between his chest and legs. 

“No, not like…” Eddie laughs a little. “Asshole, you know what I’m saying. I didn’t want you to leave. And I had a lot of feelings that I didn’t know– I still do, I have a lot of feelings that I can’t quite… You still want it to be me?”

“Yes,” Richie says miserably, not sure why Eddie’s making him admit it again. 

“I can’t picture myself with anyone besides you,” Eddie says. “When I really try to think about it.” 

“No.” Richie shakes his head, his forehead against his knees. 

“ _Yes_ ,” Eddie says, and he rests one hand on Richie’s ankle, the other on his arm. “I’m serious, Richie.” 

Richie goes to him without really realizing it, first his face colliding with Eddie’s bony chest, his arms gathering him into the embrace. Then in another moment, Richie lifts his head and they’re kissing, breathing hard against each other, a harsh press of lips and teeth that softens, gradually. It only lasts for a second or two and before they can really figure out how to fit together, or before Richie even really begins to process how this feels, Eddie pulls back. He doesn’t meet Richie’s eyes, but his hands are still fisted in the back of Richie’s t-shirt.

He says, “You have to break up with Caleb.” 

Richie blinks. “What?” 

"Your boyfriend. I’m not going to…” Eddie looks at him, his eyebrows a straight line. "You need to break up with him first.”

The emotional high has apparently passed. Still reeling a little from the fact that he just kissed Eddie for the first time, Richie sits back and grapples for his phone, yanking it off the charger.

“Well, I don’t exactly have great cell service here,” he says. “I guess I could go to the lodge and get on WiFi and send him an email. Is that what you want?” 

Eddie rolls his eyes. “I’m not going to let you cheat on him.” And he sits back, crossing his arms, perfectly stubborn. 

“Oh my god,” Richie says, standing up. “Fine. Okay. For the record, I think this is worse than waiting until I get back, but whatever. I’m going to the lodge so I can dump my boyfriend and then I’m gonna come back here and make out with you.”

Eddie’s cheeks are flushed. He holds out an arm to stop Richie as he tries to pass. “Wait, wait, we’re sharing a room with Bill…” He chews his bottom lip. 

“I can sexile Bill,” Richie says automatically. “No problem. I’ve always wanted to do that to him.” 

“Wait, what if we… went to the valley? Like we did the other night.” 

Richie’s heart skips a beat. “You want to snuggle up under the stars?” 

“I mean, it’s definitely dark enough…” 

Richie nearly flatlines. “Oh, you wanna _fool around_ under the stars.” 

“Shut up,” Eddie says crisply. “Go break up with your boyfriend, and tell Bill where we’re going and get his car keys.” 

Richie, and his dick, are really enjoying being ordered around like this, but his brain can’t help but see one potential snag. “What if he wants to come with?” 

Eddie stalls, blinking. “Tell him he’s not invited.” 

"Oh, subtle.” 

“Shut up. Go.”

It doesn’t end up being much of a problem. Bill probably suspects something, but he gives up his keys to Richie easily, and Richie shoots off a quick, appropriately apologetic message to Caleb, and then he jogs back down the path to the cabins. 

A part of him is still stuck on how sickeningly familiar this is, the way they’re making plans and acting impulsively, and a part of him expects that as soon as he gets back to the cabin, Eddie will take it back again, say he didn’t really mean it, he just got carried away. 

But when he gets back to the cabin, Eddie’s is already standing leaning against Bill’s car, a flannel blanket folded over his arms. Richie flashes the keys at him and Eddie’s face melts into a smile. Richie puts his doubts to rest, for at least the rest of the night. They weren’t lies. Eddie didn’t lie to him.

In the meadow, they lay out a blanket far enough away from the other stargazers for privacy, obscured by darkness and tall grass. On the face of El Capitan there are headlamps flickering, half a mile above the valley floor. They’re all having a much worse night than Richie is. Everyone in the world is having a worse night than Richie is. As soon as they lay down, Eddie is on him in the dark, kissing him and moving against him. Richie holds his arms and back until Eddie is actually on top of him, straddling his waist. He tastes cold and minty, his teeth freshly brushed. 

“I want to,” Eddie breathes against him. He runs a hand down Richie’s chest to the button of his jeans and then lower. 

“Yeah,” Richie whispers, nodding rapidly. “Anything.”

Richie’s going to get arrested for public indecency in a national park. That won’t be the most embarrassing headline he’s ever had. 

Eddie works open the fly of his jeans as he slides further down Richie’s legs to kneel between them.

The night is cool, in the fifties and dropping fast, but Eddie’s mouth is hot enough to keep him warm and the rest of Richie is bundled up in layers of cotton and fleece, only his face and a sliver of his belly exposed to air. He fists his hands in the slippery material of Eddie’s windbreaker and his head thunks against the hard earth, dry soil and matted grass. He opens his eyes and he sees stars—literally—above him, spilled milk in the night sky, so inky black that it looks deeper than Richie’s ever seen it, at least since he was a kid. 

“I’m seeing stars,” he says to Eddie, chuckling lightly. 

Eddie huffs a laugh around him, tightening his grip on Richie’s thighs.

* * *

When they leave Yosemite, a day later, they drive up and out of the valley and stop at the mouth of the tunnel for a final wistful gaze. Eddie asks Ben to take a picture of just him and Richie together, and then pulls Richie in closer to him with an arm around his waist. They haven’t said anything to the others yet, but subtlety is not one of their combined strengths.

The picture turns out great, Eddie’s smile bright and wide, Richie’s arm draped over his shoulder, the two of them framed by cliffs on either side. 

When they exit the park, Richie heaves a dramatic sigh of relief and says, “I can’t believe I got away with it.” In response to Eddie’s questioning stare, he reaches into his jacket pocket to reveal a sequoia pinecone. This one slightly larger than the first one he picked up, the scales flared out at the end. 

“Richie!” Eddie scolds comically. 

“Leave only footprints, take only pictures!” Ben joins in, but he’s laughing, twisting around from the front passenger seat. “Hey, can I see that?” 

Mike’s RV is on the road behind them, but he takes a different turn after not too long, to continue his journey coast to coast. Last stop, the redwoods. Bill honks his horn at him and they all wave, shouting out the open windows. “Safe travels, Mikey!”

Back in Fresno, Ben and Bev and Eddie all have flights to catch. Eddie has to go back for work, which he says quietly, regretfully to Richie. Richie can read behind the lines: Otherwise he’d stay. 

He says goodbye to Richie, out on the sidewalk, giving him a nice long hug. “We’ll figure it out from here,” he tells him, face pressed into his shoulder. “We’ll talk every day and we’ll figure it out. I’ll text you as soon as I land.” 

It might be a while until he sees him again so Richie tries to memorize the feeling of holding Eddie now, his dense hot body like a burning star, the way he tried to memorize it the other night when he gathered Eddie into his lap on the spread blanket and slipped his hand inside his pants, and Eddie’s head dropped back against his shoulder on a gasp and he gripped Richie’s forearms like he was afraid of floating away. Richie will hold onto that until he sees Eddie again. 

“We’ll figure it out,” Richie promises, rocking them back and forth a little. 

After Eddie’s disappeared into the airport and they’re back on the road, just the two of them, Bill gives Richie a sidelong glance and says, “So. I feel like something… happened.” 

Richie laughs a little, exhausted. He wrestles the seat into a reclined position and kicks his feet up on the dashboard. “Yeah, something happened.” 

“Wanna talk about it?” Bill asks cautiously. He’s mostly watching the road, but keeps throwing furtive little glances over at Richie. 

“Not quite yet,” Richie says. “But it was something good.” 

“Good,” Bill says, tapping the steering wheel decisively. “Do you have any more of those apricots or do we need to stop for more?” 

There’s a fruit stand on the side of the road ahead, rapidly approaching. Richie grins. “Let’s stop for more.”

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: [skeilig](https://skeilig.tumblr.com/)  
> twitter: [skeilig_](https://twitter.com/skeilig_)


End file.
